Oxytocin (OT) is a neuroendocrine nonapeptide that plays an important role in social memory and behavior. Nasal administration of OT has been shown to improve trust in healthy humans and social interaction in autistic subjects in some clinical trials. As a central nervous system (CNS) drug, however, OT has two unfavorable characteristics: OT is short-acting and shows poor permeability across th...

An outbreak of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), subsequent to Campylobacter jejuni enteritis, occurred in China in 2007. Serum anti-ganglioside antibodies were measured in GBS patients and controls. Genome sequencing was used to determine the phylogenetic relationship among three C. jejuni strains from a patient with GBS (ICDCCJ07001), a patient with gastroenteritis (ICDCCJ07002) and a healthy ca...

Exposure to azide compounds causes inhibition of cytochrome c oxidase in the mitochondria, leading acute lethal poisoning. Although urgent pharmaceutical intervention is required for rescue from poisoning, no antidote exists worldwide. We hypothesized that methemoglobin (metHb) can be a promising material as an poisoning because metHb strongly bind azide. However, administration not feasible ow...

We present a Hidden Markov Model method for the prediction of lipoprotein signal peptides of Gram-positive bacteria, trained on a set of 67 experimentally verified lipoproteins. The method outperforms LipoP and the methods based on regular expression patterns, in various data sets containing experimentally characterized lipoproteins, secretory proteins, proteins with an N-terminal TM segment an...

On the tropical legume Sesbania rostrata, stem-borne nodules develop after inoculation of adventitious root primordia with the microsymbiont Azorhizobium caulinodans. A cDNA clone, Srchi13, with homology to acidic class III chitinase genes, corresponds to an early nodulin gene with transiently induced expression during nodule ontogeny. Srchi13 transcripts accumulated strongly 2 days after inocu...

AB-alternating copolymers based on vinyl phenol and n-alkyl (C12 or C18) maleimide self-assemble into nanoparticles via ouzo effect. Size structure are determined by copolymer lipo/hydrophilicity, solvent/water affinity solvent diffusivity.

Fengycins are cyclic lipo-depsipeptides produced by Bacillus spp. that display potent antifungal properties but chemically unstable. This instability has meant no total synthesis of any fengycin been published. Here we report the A analogues enhanced and chemical stability under both basic acidic conditions. The prepared also demonstrate core structure can be modified simplified without loss ac...